This invention relates to improvements in hats and caps, and is especially concerned with unique means for retaining hard hats in position on a worker's head when bending over and looking down.
On construction projects of even modest size the regulations of the United States Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) specify that virtually all workers on the project must wear hard shell safety hats. This regulation is strictly enforced by most all employers in the construction industry and workers found hatless have been fined by the employer for a first violation and summarily fired upon a second violation.
Carpenters and welders, for example, find it necessary on such projects to work in a downwardly facing attitude such as when nailing down a floor or welding seams along a horizontal surface. Their hard hats tend to fall from their heads repeatedly and chin straps are believed unsatisfactory by many workers as being too confining for holding the hard hat in place. Straps extending downwardly along the back of the head in the nape of the neck region are available and are constructed substantially as disclosed in the Bowers Jr. U.S. Pat. No. 3,354,468 issued Nov. 28, 1967. That patent discloses a nape strap formed from flexible material and extends generally along the rear or back of the head band and is shiftable from a raised position where it is tucked away next to the head band to a lowered position of engaging the nape area. This construction is not entirely satisfactory in the field because the unsupported flexible character of the nape strap permits it to work itself upwardly on the head such as when jostling forces are created by the carpenter in a floor nailing operation. Frictional forces between the nape strap and the back of the head above have not proved satisfactory for maintaining the nape strap in a holding relationship with the wearer's head.
Nape straps in combination with chin straps were disclosed in the Alesi U.S. Pat. No. 3,814,043 issued Nov. 26, 1957, and in the Mickel U.S. Pat. No. 3,852,821 issued Dec. 10, 1974. There is in those disclosures no indication of the problem of maintaining the weighty helmet on the head with the nape strap arrangement alone when doing jostling type physical work. Those patents both disclose the suitability of cooperation between the chin strap and the rearwardly positioned nape strap arrangement.